Heretical thoughts on intelligence and political correctness -- written by Chris Brand, posted by John Ray

Friday, October 31, 2003

WEENIES AT IT AGAIN

A new film, ‘Thirteen’ was set to celebrate underage sex (though doubtless under some guise of warning against it). The screenplay was written by a thirteen-year-old, Nikki Reid, and involves waywards ‘Evie’, 13, leading her friend ‘Tracy’ into trouble with sex, drink and drugs. In one scene ‘Evie’ abandons her old-fashioned knickers and goes for thongs with cheery phrases like Hiya Big Boy! For better or worse, weenies will not be able to learn from all this, for British film censors have awarded only an ‘18’ certificate.

{Meantime, UK Home Secretary David Blunkett prepared legislation to jail for 5 years any weenie who had sex with anything at all, even another weenie. As a blind man, he probably had little appreciation that many girls of the 21st century were sexualized and sex-seeking from age ten.}

GENES-TAILORED MEDICINE

Nature devoted a two-page popular article to prophesying that within a decade significant numbers of drugs will be prescribed only after taking patient’s genes and heredity into account (Alison Abbott, 23 x, ‘With your genes? Take one of these three times a day’).

DYSGENIC HYSTERIA TO BE CHALLENGED

It transpired that the proposed new European Constitution would ban abortions and other procedures practised with eugenic intent (Times, 28 x). Since the abortion of Mongol babies was very likely to be deemed ‘eugenic’ by courts, it became likely that pro-abortion women’s groups would come out campaigning against the proposed Constitution – giving eugenics its first substantial public support since the 1930’s.

ANSWERING THE THERNSTROMS

As two of America’s leading blind-as-bats educationalists chanced within a whisker of realism, e.g. in The Nation and The Boston Globe, I pointed out their problems (to The Nation) as follows:

It is refreshing to see scholars and your reviewer rejecting the tired ideas that black underachievement can be explained by poverty, non-integrated schools or large class sizes ('How the other half learns', 10 November issue). But at the same time it is depressing to see black kids accused of laziness and lack of 'culture' -- two other 'explanations' of their lack of academic success that should have been dropped years ago for research finds Black kids highly motivated in the earlier school years. After forty years (if not more) of huge state-funded efforts to improve black educational levels by simplistic environmental means, it is surely time to recognize that children differ genetically and that to expect all children to achieve academic success is quite misguided. It is time to tailor education to children's strengths, not to their weaknesses.

Thursday, October 30, 2003

RANT AGAINST RACE

As part of the latest British outbreak of hysteria about ‘racism’ in the police, the Times moved to attest its anti-racist credentials by commissioning a column from left-wing ‘philosopher’ and Grauniad columnist, A. C. Grayling (25 x). The result was this:

“ ... although there is, alas, racism in the world, there is no such thing as race. This is not a paradox. Racism is an extreme form of xenophobia based chiefly on skin colour as the most easily recognisable marker of difference. But as a biological concept, “race” is an empty one..... The scientific evidence shows that such supposed “racial” characteristics” as skin colour and hair texture are merely superficial -- the genes governing them can be switched on and off in an entire population in less than 10,000 years, making a “black” people “white”, and vice versa, depending on how much sunlight they habitually encounter..... Not a few famous Britons were, in fact, “black” or of black ancestry, among the patron saint, St George; Dr Johnson’s beloved valet Francis Barber; George III’s wife Queen Charlotte; the essayist Leigh Hunt; composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor; and Florence Nightingale’s reoubtable Crimean colleague, Mary Seacole.”

1. In 1994, ‘anti-racist’ top geneticist L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues identified six main human population groups [*] and reported from their genetic data that “the greatest difference within the human species is between [sub-Saharan] Africans and non-Africans....” (The History and Geography of Human Genes).

2. Grayling had apparently not heard the views of a fellow British left-wing columnist who had taken the trouble to write a whole book about race.

In his 1964 paper “On the non-existence of human races”, Frank B. Livingstone promulgated the new truth that “there are no races, there are only clines” ..... There are limits to the power of inverted commas, however. “Races” may only exist as social constructs, but that still doesn't mean “white men can jump”

3. Grayling offered no sources for his ‘Black Britons.’ But the top Google-rated site for St George (http://www.innotts.co.uk/asperges/george/george2.html) tells the usual story that St George came from a noble Christian family in Cappadocia, Eastern Turkey, and makes no mention of him having any Negro blood. Britain’s eighteenth-century Queen Charlotte (no ‘looker’ but harmoniously married to George III and bearing him 15 children) is normally said to have had a slightly African face, traceable chiefly back to a Portuguese ancestor having taken a Black wife five centuries earlier. The poet and essayist Leigh Hunt, the Southgate-born son of an American clergyman, was also scarcely Negroid in appearance, as can be seen at http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/bookcolls/leighhunt/leighhunt.htm. Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912, also author of ‘Hiawatha’) was at most half-Black, being the son of a West African doctor and an English woman; and Mary Seacole was apparently no full-blown Black mama. So that leaves only Doctor Johnson’s Jamaican-born manservant, companion and surrogate son as Black -- though inheriting most of Johnson’s fortune, he had no head for figures and soon fell upon hard times.

Sunday, October 26, 2003

TERRITORIAL SEGREGATION ADVOCATED

As Britain’s ‘peace process’ with the IRA collapsed for the umpteenth time, top Times columnist Simon Jenkins drew attention to Northern Ireland’s twenty 20’-high fences in segregating Protestants and Catholics and allowing a bit of peace (22 x, ‘The Good Friday Agreement is brain-dead’). Jenkins further advocating handing over schools, roads, transport and local policing to “subsidiary councils” instead of trying to continue the power-sharing farce at Stormont.

MUSLIM MADNESS

While America tried to help Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Turkey (which America wants to join the European Union), Afghanistan and Iraq – despite the threat that Islam posed to Europe -- loony Mahathir Mohamad, the Malaysian prime minister, decided to kick the American ally in the teeth by telling an applauding audience made up of kings, presidents and emirs that Jews were running and ruining the world. Jews, he claimed, "invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so that they can enjoy equal rights with others." These were not "extremist" views held by a radical minority of Muslims, Australian psychologist John Ray pointed out. These were mainstream Islamic views, as evidenced by the favorable response from the Egyptian foreign minister, who called the remarks, "a very, very wise assessment." Afghan President Hamid Karzai, an American ally whose country would still be governed by the Taliban were it not for American soldiers, some of whom are Jewish, called the speech "very correct."

DON’T MENTION OUR CRIMES – WE’RE ASYLUM SEEKERS

The entire British press managed to report the street murder of a 10-month old baby in Carlisle without ever mentioning that the (promptly arrested) assailant was an Albanian asylum seeker who had fallen out with a British girl whom he had made pregnant. What an achievement for diversicrats! What an illumination for Brits when they discover the truth about peecee journalism!

WESTERN GENIUS CELEBRATED

Charles Murray (who co-authored The Bell Curve in 1994) produced a new book documenting the world’s top 4,000 geniuses – according to page space devoted to them in encyclopaedias. Murray avoided dwelling on the neuroticism, psychoticism and unhappy childhoods of many artistic geniuses (see CRB Quotations) and instead stressed the importance of wealth, freedom and a positive cultural atmosphere (as happily provided in the West of the past 500 years) – but such commonplace good sense did not prevent his book being panned as boring by the Wall Street Journal (23 x). At the top of Murray’s four biggest categories (Western Literature, Western Art, Western Philosophy, and Combined Sciences) were Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Aristotle and Newton. (By contrast, the Internet Hall of Fame for Psychology showed Plato ahead of Aristotle; and this pair of ancients being followed by Kant, Descartes, Freud, Vygotsky, Darwin, Shakespeare, Saint Augustine, James, Dickens, Marx, Ibsen, Goethe, Jung and Pavlov.)

Saturday, October 25, 2003

LOW BLACK ACHIEVEMENT INERADICABLE

Black-dominated Birmingham, which had laboured for thirty-five years to boost the educational results of its many Black kids admitted failure: in 2002, only 25 per cent of the city's African-Caribbean adolescent boys gained the benchmark five GCSEs graded A* to C, compared to a city average of 45 per cent. – However, the Birmingham Post gaily blamed the result on “the failure of government initiatives” and “institutional racism.” {Likewise, from the USA, Florida reported that its typical 12-year-old Black child lagged the average White child by four years in educational level – but the Tallahassee Democrat felt sure this was due to poverty, racism, low expectations or something and could be changed soon by a determined effort…. The amount of time, ink and paper wasted on untruth by PeeCee must one day be charged to the responsible miscreants.} {Further evidence of continuity came with a UK Government report that Blacks were six times as likely as Whites to be ‘sectioned’, i.e. certified as mad and compulsorily detained. Heroic measures, including more jobs in the bureaucracy for Labour-voting ‘experts’, were deemed necessary to deal with this perfectly traditional phenomenon.}

RAJ RESUMED

Faced with Muslim criminality in the British Midlands, often organized from India’s disputed cowboy country of Kashmir, Britain announced it would be stationing up to 28 policemen in Srinagar. The officers would not be armed but would be regularly accompanied by Indian soldiers. Already in 1993, the UK had spent £100,000 flying British police to and from India to pursue suspected criminals who had fled from Birmingham to Kashmir.

PAEDOHYSTERIA CONDEMNED

The Wall Street Journal (20 x) celebrated the pending release from prison of the unsafely convicted nursery school teacher, Gerald Amirault – 49 and imprisoned since 1986 on what many judged concocted testimony. Amirault’s mother and sister, also falsely accused, had been released earlier. The Wall Street Journal said the accusations of ‘child molestation’ had been “based on bogus testimony dragged from browbeaten child witnesses.” Through their 17-year ordeal, the Amirault family had been supported by the Woodhill Foundation, USA. The Amirault’s was by 2002 used in sociology textbooks to illustrate ‘hysteria-driven prosecutions’ – as Gerald Amirault was surprised to find one day in the course of his reading in prison for a liberal arts degree.

BURT DEFENDED

My 1995 review of Nick Mackintosh’s edited volume about Sir Cyril Burt was kindly posted on the Net by Australian psychologist John Ray at http://jonjayray.tripod.com/burtdef.html. The review includes a suggestion as to how Burt obtained crucial data on separated monozygotic twins (who conveniently went to homes differing substantially in social class yet still turned out to have similar IQs).

RACE-REALIST POLICE

After years of mildly pestering Britain’s police only for ‘stop and search’, ‘institutional racism’ and failing to convict White youths proven innocent in court of murdering Black media darling Stephen Lawrence, the BBC decided to turn up the heat. They planted a journalist, Mark Daly, 28, for six months as a trainee cop in Manchester and equipped him with the latest in pinhole cameras. Daly led his 120 fellow police trainees to believe he himself was racist. Soon he was hearing crude and not-so-crude ‘racist’ remarks in police canteens.

Once his own cover had been blow (after a tip-off) he went public and swiftly achieved eight suspensions and, soon afterwards, six resignations. Asked if he was comfortable with racism, one trainee, a former social worker, was filmed saying: "I'm cool with it, yeah. Because at the end of the day, for the last nine years, I was working for an organisation which was totally politically correct." Although 5% of trainees are typically screened out by police as insufficiently ‘diverse’ in their attitudes, one newly graduated Manchester officer ventured to the BBC’s plant that he voted for the British National Party and that Hitler ‘had the right idea but had gone about it all the wrong way.’ Police pointed out this officer had not completed his supervised initiation period – so had never undertaken duties alone.

Whereas Queen Elizabeth I had made the Church of England a success by saying she would not “make windows into men’s souls”, the BBC had decided no longer to tolerate private conversation. Whether Britain’s millions of race realists would at last feel obliged to stand up for themselves thus became at once the major national question -- followed by that of when far-leftist tall poppy haters would be similarly exposed and rooted out of the UK’s universities, schools, local government bureaucracies and media.

The Times relegated its report of the BBC’s snooping to a small item on its page 4 (though in fairness it did carry a report that only one of 63 Chinese illegal immigrants caught working in June had been deported, and that the employer had not been prosecuted). No British newspaper commented on the precedent set by the BBC’s invasion of privacy or even on its legality after years of supposedly privacy-protecting legislation. Comment at the BBC’s ‘Talking Point’ ran 20-1 in favour of the BBC’s underhand action. The last ten policemen murdered in Britain were murdered by Blacks. For more of the Manchester officers’ choice comments, see Sky News.

{The day after the story broke, the Daily Telegraph and Times still both declined to comment, and carried no relevant letters. By contrast, the Guardian and Independent had a field day. They demanded charges of “obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception and damaging police property” against Mark Daly be dropped; and they rebuked Home Secretary David Blunkett who (alone among Britain’s political class) had criticized the BBC for a “covert stunt” involving more ‘story creation’ than ‘story reporting.’}

Friday, October 24, 2003

SWITZERLAND GETS NEOLIBERAL RACE REALISM

As the Swiss general election approached, the nationalist Swiss People’s Party (SVP [V for Voelkische]) moved ahead in the polls, with 25% of people favouring it, ahead of the Social Democrats (23%) and other parties. In 1999, SVP support stood at 14%. Headed by billionaire industrialist Christoph Blocher, 63, the son of a vicar and something of an anti-Semite (though not at Haider-ish or Le Pen-ish levels), the SVP mounted an advertising campaign that clearly chimed with voters: some ads read “The Swiss are becoming Negroes”; others gave police mugshots of notorious criminals and called them “Our Dear Foreigners”; and another featured Osama bin Liner with the caption “Make A Stand Now!” Government figures showed foreigners made up 20% of Switzerland’s population (a big increase in recent years) but more than 50% of its convicted criminals and drug dealers. One SVP plan was for a referendum on giving local authorities the right to decide whether foreigners living in their areas would receive Swiss citizenship, meaning that residents of a given town or village could vote on a candidate's suitability to become Swiss. (Previous such votes were overwhelmingly anti-immigrant and had been slapped down from on high.) A third of the Swiss when polled said they were concerned about immigration and asylum seekers.

The election campaign involved many efforts by lefttists to use the law to prohibit SVP advertising as ‘racist.’ One full-page SVP press advert slammed "pampered criminals, unabashed asylum seekers and a brutal Albanian mafia", and claimed that "black Africans" were among ethnic groups dominating drugs smuggling. The SVP also favoured free market policies and low taxation. {In the election, the SVP won 27% of the vote and surged to become Switzerland’s largest party, with 55 seats in the 200-strong lower house of parliament (National Council) and a prospect of supplying two of Switzerland’s 7-strong ruling cabinet (Federal Council). Leader Blocher was thought likely to offer a return to traditional Swiss values of orderliness after an explosion in the Gotthard Tunnel and a mid-air collision over Lake Constance.}

BRITAIN GETTING RACE REALISM

The percentage of Brits believing ‘race is an important issue’ had risen dramatically from around 3% in the 1990’s to around 30% in 2003, the Economist reported. In Autumn 2003, all areas of Britain apart from the already migrant-inundated London and the South-East had around 20% of people denying that ‘it is a good thing that Britain in a multiracial society.’

{The British National Party was hindered from capitalizing on this by its failure to spell out an attractive positive (why not liberal?) vision of the Britain it wished to defend and by its ‘brutes in suits’ image – 2003 brought press revelations that one leading member had been jailed for five years for gang rape and robbery, one BNP councillor resigned after a bottle fight with another member, and another councillor went independent after a ‘procedural disagreement’ with the party. But for the BNP, Press Officer Phill Edwards said his party contained "doves not vultures."}

Other parties did not dare address the issue because they had no policies remotely likely to reduce let alone reverse dullard immigration, because they would not say the asylum swindling farce must simply end, and because they were afraid to be called ‘racist.’ Council by-elections saw the Liberal Democrats do relatively well – after weeks in which press commentators said the party had realized the need to move to the right.

ACHIEVEMENT ELITE APPRECIATED

After a half-decade of work, Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve and scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, came back to prominence with another massive book, 688 pages full of graphs and tables. Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 (HarperCollins, $29.95) ranked the 4,000 most important artists and scientists in human history.

Monday, October 20, 2003

Replies to ‘A Danish spectre’ by Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail of 2nd. October, 2003

1. “….while an element of intelligence is passed on biologically from parents to children, other elements are not. So if surrounding circumstances are favourable, the children of poor parents – who themselves may or may not be intelligent -- can become highly educated.”

Why not quantify that element? It’s around 40%. Additionally, parents will influence child IQ if they provide poor, unstimulating, discouraging and unsympathetic environments – and that’s just what many low-IQ mothers do (as seen in the figures for child neglect and abuse quoted in The Bell Curve and The g Factor). To say children from low-IQ mothers “can” become highly educated is disingenuous beyond belief. The statistical expectation is that a mother of IQ80 will have children averaging IQ92. In today’s society, IQs at such levels carry serious consequences in ineducability, unemployability, criminality and proness to sexual diseases and unwwnted births.

2. “….there are many, many examples of bright people who come from the lowest social classes (not to mention stupid people from the upper classes). That’s why the low expectations of so many schools in poor areas are such a scandal, precisely because good schooling can make all the difference in raising children out of the disadvantage of their backgrounds.”

Here “many” is the slippery term. “Many, many” sounds a real lot. But what proportion of low-class-born kids become “bright people” [IQ 110 and over]? MP’s argument, if she has one, would be with sociologists* who have long concluded that even a traditional working class environment was a serious handicap in today’s educational world – and the modern single-parenting underclass and its genes are substantially worse.

*"Class inequalities in educational attainment have been consistently large during the post-war period in Scotland. In the late 1970's, middle-class children were more than four times as likely as working-class children to enter an advanced or degree-level course, and they were six times as likely to enter university."
A.F.McPHERSON & D.RAFFE, 1983, Edinburgh University Bulletin.

3. “….even if unintelligent women were to stop having children, this would not reduce the proportion of unintelligent people in the population; on the contrary, it might prevent as many potentially intelligent children from being born.”

The absurd conclusion from MP’s deceitful ‘cans’ and ‘manys’.

4. “….Heavily influenced by the American eugenists, Hitler started sterilising people with congenital illness in 1934….”
The majority of progressive and liberal people approved of eugenics. Feminists were specially keen on preventing rapists and sexual perverts from passing on their genes. Winston Churchill actually travelled to New York to attend a eugenics conference.

"The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feebleminded and insane classes, coupled as it is with steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed before another year has passed. ....after a simple surgical operation [sterilisation], [those treated] could be permitted to live freely in the world without causing much inconvenience to others."
Winston CHURCHILL (Home Secretary), 1906. Quoted by A.Roberts, The Spectator, 9 iv 1994.

But Churchill went on to settle for ‘colonisation’ and separation of the sexes as the proper way to limit low-IQ procreation and in 1940 famously condemned the Nazi programme of “perverted science.”

"As the English doctor, A.F.Tredgold put it in a speech quoted by Winston Churchill in a 1910 Cabinet meeting, "....Colony life would....protect the feeble-minded from a certain section of society and society from the feeble-minded." In the U.S., colony provision was supplemented by legislation for involuntary sterilisation of defectives under which tens of thousands of men and women were sterilised in the first half of this century."
Phil FENNELL, 1994, Times Higher Educational Supplement, 21 x. (Reviewing J.W.Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind, University of California Press.)

5. “….educated women are having fewer children. That surely is the real problem, because it is causing countries across the developed world to experience a drop in the birthrate of advantaged babies.”

Here MP agrees with Helmuth Nyborg. But her concession sits strangely alongside her Point 3, above. Apparently abstention from breeding on the part of low-IQ women won’t raise IQ; but abstention by the high-IQ will cause problems.

6. “The solution, though, is not to stop the poor having children but to alter patterns of behaviour – patterns which have been so disastrously promoted by those very educated people whom Professor Nyborg extols.”

Here MP introduces her long-preferred moralistic agenda. But she should acknowledge that ‘the permissive society’, with its high rate of divorce and single-parenting, has worked fine for the higher-IQ. It’s at low levels of IQ that the traditional disciplines and supervision provided by church, village gossips and mother-in-law are arguably needed. – A good reason for trying to get down the numbers of low-IQ parents!

7. “The educated classes make a fetish of intelligence. This leads some of them to advocate a draconian approach towards those they think don’t possess it. The result is that they single out the poor for punishment while neatly avoiding facing up to the need to tackle irresponsible behaviour, including their own. It’s not intelligence that matters. It’s behaviour, stupid!”

A ringing conclusion that will go straight into my Quotes about the Importance of Intelligence. Here are some others.

“Poverty, in the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth [tracking 12,000 young people since 1979, when they were 14 to 22 years old], is eight times more common among whites from poor backgrounds than among those who grew up in privilege — yet it’s fifteen times more common at the low end of the IQ spectrum. Illegitimacy is twice as common among the poorest whites as among the most prosperous, but it’s eight times as common among the dullest (IQ under 75) as it is among the brightest (IQ over 125). And males in the bottom half of the IQ distribution are nearly ten times as likely as those in the top half to find themselves in jail.”
Geoffrey COWLEY, 1994, ‘Testing the science of intelligence’, Newsweek, 24 x.

“The most extensive clinical studies of neglectful mothers have been conducted by Norman Polansky, whose many years of research began with a sample drawn from rural Appalachia, subsequently replicated with an urban Philadelphia sample. He described the typical neglectful mother as follows:

She is of limited intelligence (IQ below 70), has failed to achieve more than an eighth-grade education, and has never held....employment.... She has at best a vague, or extremely limited idea of what her children need emotionally and physically. She seldom is able see things from the point of view of others and cannot take their needs into consideration when responding to a conflict they experience.

....The most extensive evidence describes the impulsiveness, inconsistency and confusion that mark the parenting style of many abusive parents [e.g. Smith et al., 1974, Brit.J.Psychiat. 125]. ....The inconsistency can reach mystifying proportions: one study of parent-child interactions found that children in abusing families had about the same chance of obtaining positive reinforcement for aggressive behaviors as for pro-social behaviors (Berger, 1980, Amer.J.Family Ther. 8). ....The reluctance of scholars and policymakers alike to look at the role of low intelligence in malparenting may properly be called scandalous.”
R.J.HERRNSTEIN & C.MURRAY, 1994, The Bell Curve. New York : Free Press.

“Today, as China is now known to have been embarked for the past six years on a vast programme of eugenics (in the Peking area), it is high time for the West to come to terms with IQ and with what is to be done about it. The last Western country to treat the g factor with as much contempt as do Britain and the USA today was Nazi Germany. With awe-inspiring indifference as to how to sustain Germany’s national culture or win a world war, the Nazis ensured the last great migration of intelligence in the West—giving the USA ‘the Bomb’ in the process (e.g. Hobsbawm, 1994*). (The Nazis thus reversed that original massive influx of entrepreneurial talent from which Prussia had so benefited after the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day in Paris.) Today, an equally serious question confronts the West: Can the triumph of Western liberal democracy be long sustained without taking intelligence seriously? Although the London School view of IQ has survived the Burt Affair, the importance of IQ and intelligence has still to be properly recognized.”
C.R.BRAND, 1997, ‘The importance of intelligence in Western societies.’ Journal of Biosocial Science (Special Issue, eds N.Mascie-Taylor & C.Brand).

* Hobsbawm (1994, Age of Extremes) observes: “The National Socialists....deprived themselves of the flower of continental Europe’s physical talent by driving Jews and ideological opponents into exile, incidentally destroying the early twentieth-century German scientific supremacy in the process. Between 1900 and 1933, twenty-five out of sixty-six Nobel prizes in Physics and Chemistry had gone to Germany; but since 1933 only about one in ten.”

Sunday, October 12, 2003

IQ COMING IN

While IQ testing was spurned in the West lest it upset PeeCee’s pseudo-egalitarian apple cart, the Malaysian government announced the introduction of testing for all its primary school pupils -- they were particularly aiming to identify dyslexic children [poor reading but above-average IQ] so as to target them with special teaching. IQ testing was also coming in handy in Bandung, West Java, where the state-owned aircraft maker PT Dirgantara (PTDI) announced it would use IQ results to slim down its bloated workforce.

British universities also came a step nearer to testing intelligence, with Oxbridge announcing it was developing ‘special tests’ to try to identify academically able children from Britain’s lousy socialism-ridden comprehensive schools -- such tests would certainly measure IQ in all but name.

Further evidence of the value of IQ came from the University of Glasgow, where researcher Carole Hart had conducted a 70-year follow-up of 938 participants in the Scottish Mental Survey, which measured the IQ of 11-year-olds across Scotland on June 1, 1932. The dullest 25 per cent were found to have earlier deaths, with low IQ being particularly associated with heart disease and lung cancer. Only a third of the effect was linked to ‘deprivation and social class’.’ Having a high IQ was helpful chiefly to people living in poor areas.

{The claim that IQ is linked positively to “health, fitness and longevity” and negatively to smoking was first made by me in 1987 -- in a table reprinted on p. 300 of Arthur Jensen’s 1998 book, The g Factor: the Science of Mental Ability.}

IQ testing was also said in a Californian court case to help identify people who may have made false confessions under police interrogation -- about a quarter of such confessions come from the dullest 2·5% of the population.

Deep-seated links between race and disease were admitted by Washington
medics to the newspaper, The Arizona Republic. Apparently, rates of common chronic ailments such as heart disease, diabetes and asthma are significantly higher among African Americans than among non-Hispanic whites (although American Indians and Hispanics actually suffer higher rates of diabetes than do blacks). And death rates for such diseases show even greater racial disparities. Black women are more likely to suffer more aggressive forms of breast cancer than white women, are three to four times more likely to develop lupus and are up to nine times more likely to develop uterine fibroids. Obesity is 60 percent more prevalent in the African American population than among white Americans. The explanation? “Researchers had long believed that the social, environmental and economic stresses of lower-income and minority status explained those differences, but they could not ignore a growing mountain of research. Studies that compared the incidence of disease among twins, blood relatives and spouses, and among blacks in different economic strata, all suggested that inheritance plays a key role in the development, course and outcome of certain diseases.” When it came to medicine, said Cedars-Sinai geneticist Jerome Rotter, “it is very foolish to be colorblind, because ethnic groups differ in their genes. Only to some scientists is this a confusing concept.” Rotter acknowledged readily that, day in and day out, physicians and medical researchers engaged in racial profiling in deciding on diagnosis and the best treatment for patients. “In fact, it's called good medicine”, he said.

Saturday, October 11, 2003

LAING AND EYSENCK VINDICATED

Forty years ago, the Glaswegian psychiatrist (and alcoholic babe-bagger) Ronnie Laing threw out that psychosis was linked to creativity. Ten years ago, London School leader (and ex-German Junior tennis champion) Hans Eysenck began to say that psychosis, the personality trait Psychoticism and creativity were all linked to ‘latent inhibition’ – failing to suppress superficially useless memories. Now this:

FROM: psychiatry-research@yahoogroups.com

Biological basis for creativity linked to mental illness: Creative people more open to stimuli from environment

BY Jessica Whiteside

Sept. 30, 2003 -- Psychologists from U of Texas and Harvard University have identified one of the biological bases of creativity. The study in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says the brains of creative people appear to be more open to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment. Other people's brains might shut out this same information through a process called "latent inhibition" - defined as an animal's unconscious capacity to ignore stimuli that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs. Through psychological testing, the researchers showed that creative individuals are much more likely to have low levels of latent inhibition.

"This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment," says co-author and U of T psychology professor Jordan Peterson. "The normal person classifies an object, and then forgets about it, even though that object is much more complex and interesting than he or she thinks. The creative person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities."

Previously, scientists have associated failure to screen out stimuli with psychosis. However, Peterson and his co-researchers - lead author and psychology lecturer Shelley Carson of Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard PhD candidate Daniel Higgins - hypothesized that it might also contribute to original thinking, especially when combined with high IQ. They administered tests of latent inhibition to Harvard undergraduates. Those classified as eminent creative achievers - participants under age 21 who reported unusually high scores in a single area of creative achievement - were seven times more likely to have low latent inhibition scores.

The authors hypothesize that latent inhibition may be positive when combined with high intelligence and good working memory - the capacity to think about many things at once - but negative otherwise. Peterson states: "If you are open to new information, new ideas, you better be able to intelligently and carefully edit and choose. If you have 50 ideas, only two or three are likely to be good. You have to be able to discriminate or you'll get swamped."

"Scientists have wondered for a long time why madness and creativity seem linked," says Carson. "It appears likely that low levels of latent inhibition and exceptional flexibility in thought might predispose to mental illness under some conditions and to creative accomplishment under others."

For example, during the early stages of diseases such as schizophrenia, which are often accompanied by feelings of deep insight, mystical knowledge and religious experience, chemical changes take place in which latent inhibition disappears. "We are very excited by the results of these studies," says Peterson. "It appears that we have not only identified one of the biological bases of creativity but have moved towards cracking an age-old mystery: the relationship between genius, madness and the doors of perception."

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

The front page of the Daily Telegraph announced what the paper described as 'the biggest shake-up in secondary education for 60 years' (3 x). It said the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority had made an 'astonishingly low-key announcement' that, from the age of 14, children would in future be offered a choice between academic and vocational courses. The Daily Telegraph said the change marked the end of the national curriculum for children aged 14 and over, 'amounting to an admission that 30 years of comprehensive education had failed'. In future, said a government handout (from the “Qualification and Curriculum Authority”) each state school child would have a “negotiated individual learning plan” from age 14 -- allowing a choice between paths to philosophy or plumbing

RACE ’N’ CRIME REALISM

On the eve of the UK ‘Conservative’ Party’s annual conference, a nationwide (Populus) poll told them how to win back voters (Times, 4 x 03). Asked what would make them vote Conservative, 46% of Brits said “proposing much tougher sentencing for convicted criminals” and 43% said “presenting a clear plan to reduce the number of asylum-seekers entering Britain.” By contrast, only 9% of voters said they would be impressed by “radical policies to restructure the National Health Service” and only 22% were interested in “measures to support marriage and the traditional family.”

JEWISH RACE REALISM

Late in the day, admittedly, but a New York Jewish group, ‘Jewish Task Force’ (which aimed to “save America and Israel...from hateful anti-American Muslim fanatics”) weighed in to the Californian election on the side of (leftie-smeared ‘sexually harassing Nazi’) Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. Apparently, left-wing Democrat candidate Cruz Bustamante still supported a Hispanic organization he joined in his youth which remained openly racist, having as its motto ‘For the [Hispanic] race, everything. For those outside the race, nothing.’ The organization, MEChA, was shamelessly “anti-White and anti-Semitic” and aimed for a violent take-over of the south-western states of the USA (four of which already had a 25% Hispanic population -- California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas).

Also, while Italy’s leader Silvio Berlusconi faced a hailstorm of criticism for saying Mussolini hadn’t been the worst, American Jewry’s ‘Anti-Defamation League’ decided to stand by its awarding Berlusconi the title ‘Statesman of the Year’ for his stout defence of Israel’s efforts to deal with Islamic terror.

FEMINISTS TO FEEL HEAT

After a 17-year-old girl claimed she had been raped by some half-a-dozen Black footballers in a London hotel, the News of the World (5 x 03) defended the 12-hour orgy -- throughout which the girl apparently made no complaint and finally enjoyed her hotel breakfast with the lads at 1p.m. the next day. The ‘News of the Screws’ headline was: “She had sex with all of us. No-one forced her. She never said No”.

Supposedly the girl had spent some time in a restaurant suggesting to the men that she would fancy a gang-bang. Orgies, it turned out, were a standard part of twenty-first century British soccer: the practice of gang-banging enthusiastic young females was called ‘roasting’ (as of a chicken, cf. ‘stuffing’). The talkative Black ‘party organizer’ who had taken the girl to the hotel and had sex with her (consensually, both agree, but then the soccer stars turned up): “It's a 50/50 chance that if someone walked up to a girl in a club and said a soccer star wants to s**g them, they'd say, ‘Oh really, does he?' But British feminazies were unlikely to take all this lying down...

Soon afterwards, England’s most expensive soccer star, Black full back Rio Ferdinand, who cost £30 million, failed to turn up for a routine drug test, prompting suspicions that he had once more been on the town or worse -- he had several convictions and penalizations for drinking, speeding, violence and mixing with known drug dealers. Ferdinand, who said he had been distracted while purchasing a new house (i.e. mansion), was suspended just four days before England’s big match with Turkey -- a fine tribute to what ‘diversity’ can do for a football squad.

MILLIONAIRES AS SURVIVORS

From research into 300 of the UK’s 5,000 self-made millionaires emerged a remarkable result: “Self-made millionaires are four times more likely to suffer from dyslexia than the rest of the population” (Daily Mail, 6 x 03). The result was announced by business psychologist Adrian Atkinson.

According to the British Dyslexia Association, some 4% of the population is dyslexic, with a further 6% showing mild to moderate problems; but 40% of self-made millionaires had been diagnosed at some stage as dyslexic. Star examples of dyslexic millionaires are Lord Heseltine (former Conservative Defence Secretary), businessman Sir Richard Branson and supermodel Jodie Kidd.

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

A ban on the immigration into Britain of religious extremists (presumably Muslim) was urged by Leicester University’s Professor of History, Richard Bonney (Times Higher, 26 ix).

WHEEL RE-INVENTED

Shocking the readers of the Observer newspaper (28 ix), one of that paper’s reporters filed to the effect that skull size, brain size, IQ, memory and resistance to the cognitive ravages of age were all pretty strongly linked. However, the report (of work by Christopher Martyn at the University of Southampton) made no mention of previous similar observations by Professor J. Philippe Rushton -- as also by Emeritus Professor Arthur Jensen and Professor Vincent Egan (Glasgow Caledonian University).

DANISH DEAN DEMONIZED

Top differential psychologist Helmuth Nyborg, of Aarhus University, spoke out in favour of paying low-IQ people if they refrain from having more children ‘ for whom the bottom 15% of the population are notoriously ill-suited to cope (see The g Factor, Chapter 4). (Such a proposal had first been made by Nobel Prize-winner William Shockley in the 1970’s, causing consternation among leftists in the USA and the effort by Leon Kamin to blacken the name of Sir Cyril Burt. IQ psychologists then fought back with research linking IQ strongly to ‘mental speed’, with new demonstrations of the importance of the g factor, and with a major new twin study showing g to be highly heritable.) Nyborg was promptly jumped on by Denmark’s ‘Integration Minister’, Bertel Haarder, who said Nyborg's suggestions were “against all moral principles”

Prof. Lene Koch, of Denmark’s Public Health Institute, who said genetic scientists around the world ‘had rejected the theory that intelligence was hereditary’, by New Zealand’s Stuff webzine which denied that a high IQ was of any great value; by various other politicians and ‘experts’, and by usually right-wing columnist Melanie Phillips in the London Daily Mail (1 x 03). But Nyborg, the Dean of the Institute of Psychology at Aarhus, stated his views boldly, plainly and at some length, saying: “It's easy to make associations to Hitler and Nazism. But my proposal has nothing to do with Nazism. Hitler was not a eugenicist, but an ideologue who abused eugenics. He didn't want to improve the human race, he wanted to get rid of certain groups such as Jews, gypsies and homosexuals, and he massacred many of the more intelligent among them. Between 10 and 20 per cent of the population, who cannot fill in a time sheet at work or who cannot hold down a job or care adequately for their children, should not reproduce. We are all aware of this problem, but we don't dare to talk about it. But we should talk -- for the sake of society and the future, so that we can have productive citizens and not people who need help.”

{Apart from not mentioning that “help” is now a vast job-creation programme for people of left-ish views, Helmuth didn’t leave much out. (He might have noted the sterilization programme for drug-addicted single mothers run by ‘Children Requiring a Caring Komuunity’ [C.R.A.C.K.] in the USA.) A job well done by the editor of the recent Festschrift for Arthur Jensen (The Scientific Study of General Intelligence, Oxford : Pergamon)! The story was covered by Humanité(Paris); by Australia’s News.com, Courier-Mail (Brisbane) and Sydney Morning Herald; by Julian Isherwood in the Daily Telegraph and Chicago-Sun Times; in Gulf Daily News (‘The Voice of Bahrain’); and a bit more sympathetically in Straits Times, Singapore (where Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yu once encouraged eugenics). It could lead to the first big debate about IQ since the attacks on Art Jensen and Hans Eysenck in the early 1970’s, on Phil Rushton and Richard Lynn in the late 1980’s and on Glayde Whitney, Charles Murray, Raymond Cattell and myself in the mid-1990’s. My own views on how to dissociate eugenics from the Nazizeit are set out in a (substantial) essay, ‘Liberating the Future’ ‘ currently on offer to the Brussels magazine, The Sprout.}

BRAVE RACE REALIST

America’s Rush Limbaugh faced down a storm of criticism after he had said a Black footballer, Donovan McNabb, was over-rated because “the media had been very desirous that a Black quarterback do well.” The relatively-right-wing chat-show host resigned from another show to oblige his seniors, but he remained unrepentant on his own radio show (which typically reaches 20 million listeners).

Sunday, October 05, 2003

TOP ANTI-ORIENTALIST KICKS BUCKET

Here is how the Wall Street Journal (25 ix 03) gleefully announced the demise of the man who persuaded a generation of Western lefties to believe that all Western work on other nations and races was shot through with what he called Orientalism, i.e. undiscriminating prejudice against all peoples and cultures east of Constantinople.

Edward Said, a rock-throwing Columbia literature professor known for his virulent anti-Israel and anti-America views, is dead at 67. Said last appeared in this column in May, when we quoted an article he wrote for the crackpot Web site Counterpunch.org:

"Wherever you look in the Congress there are the tell-tale signs either of the Zionist lobby, the right-wing Christians, or the military-industrial complex, three inordinately influential minority groups who share hostility to the Arab world, unbridled support for extremist Zionism, and an insensate conviction that they are on the side of the angels."

Charming, wasn't he? Said portrayed himself as a victim of Israeli aggression, but in a 1999 issue of Commentary, Justus Weiner published the results of an extensive investigation that disproved many of Said's autobiographical claims:

"The plain, direct and honest truth is radically at odds with the parable he has been at pains to construct over the decades," Weiner wrote. "That parable, designed to augment the passions that have animated the revanchist program of so many Palestinian nationalists, is a lie."

What with the death of loony-left Stephen Jay Gould earlier this year, hereditarians are on something of a roll -- making for their own losses c. 2000 of Lee Willerman, Hans Eysenck and Glayde Whitney.

SPECCIE HAS A GO

Perhaps emboldened by David Blunkett's race-realist stirrings (the blind Home Secretary is healthily horrified when he happens to learn what modern Britain is really like and had begun to propose bioinformatic identity cards so as to identify illegal immigrants), the Speccies Associate Editor, Rod Liddle put the boot into Black community and its tremulous community-worshipping appended social workers of Birmingham who failed to prevent a 7-year-old Black girl from being shot dead in the back so she would never identify the murderer of her Black drug-dealing father for whom his gangland boss had called (27 ix).

PEECEE TV RUBBISHED

The over-representation of ethnic minorities in Britain's TV dramas, soaps, voxpops and advertisements was deplored by top intellectual Sir Ludovic Kennedy, 83.

'Ludo', as he is known, famous for his liberalism and for pinpointing and remedying injustices, wrote in The Oldie that political correctness had got "completely out of hand" and urged producers to bring ethnic minority appearances down to the 7.5% that would be in line with their percentage of the U.K. population. A BBC spokesman promptly replied that ethnic minorities were 9% of the UK population, and sometimes 30% in the inner-city areas where soap operas are set. Mr A. Yentob, director of BBC drama, said that Sir Ludovic "should get out more." Channel 4, which takes 11% of its staff from ethnic minorities, said of Sir Ludovic's remarks:

"We do not think these comments justify a response. They are clearly ludicrous.'' The Commission for Racial Equality said: "It is sad to see a well-known author and commentator like Ludovic Kennedy so misunderstand the realities of modern multi-racial Britain."

{In fact 2001 Census figures showed that non-White ethnic minorities were 7.9% of the U.K. population (and 9.1% of England's population) Rural areas around London had around 4% of their population from non-White ethnic groups.}

Product of Edinburgh, Eton, Christ Church (Oxford) and the Navy, writer and broadcaster Ludo has a reputation for outspeaking -- earlier in 2003 describing one TV presenter as "an ageing hamster." His work has involved radio and television, including being a presenter of Independent Television News (ITN), and writing in Newsweek magazine. He is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society (along with such dedicated atheists as Richard Dawkins and Gore Vidal). In 2001 he resigned his 45-year membership of the Liberal Democrats because its new leader, Charles Kennedy, would not support voluntary euthanasia.

DEFYING PEECEE

Malysian Airlines said it would resist a suit by a trade union demanding that air stewardesses include representative numbers of ethnic minorities, fatties, oldies etc. (John Ray, 24 ix). A top manager said, “Let's face reality. Customers prefer to be served by young, demure and pretty stewardesses, especially Asian ladies.” {“Girls”, surely!}

INDISCRIMINATE ANTI-DISCRIMINATION SLAMMED

The muddle of the West’s reaction to 9/11 was exposed at VDare (19 ix). Contrary to all reason, it is actually illegal for a US airline to insist or even to prefer that its pilots are US citizens!

After the British Government paid out £4.5million to Kenyans who claimed they had been hurt by munitions left behind in the 1960’s, the country proceeded to produce a tidal wave of allegations of rape by British soldiers (while fighting the Kenyan terrorists, the Mau Mau). Thankfully the British High Commission in Nairobi, after examining the supposed police records of these ancient ‘rapes’ was able to conclude that they were all forged -- and thus a splendid testimony at once to African greed, duplicity and stupidity.

Saturday, October 04, 2003

IMMIGRATION REALISM

As California's liberal-left judges closed down pending elections (lest Hispicolats dimple their chads, poor things), it transpired there was even an American Jewish group opposing the tidal wave of immigration which the USA was suffering. {Times, they are a-changing!}

HARVARD HYPOCRITES

At the world's intellectual centre of PeeCee tyranny, it was revealed that only 28 (5.3%) of the 530 assistant librarians were Black, and only 8 (1.7% ) of the 450 librarians classified as managers and professional librarians (Scotsman, 22 ix). Harvard’s unexpected race realism came to light as it was hit with a race-and-gender discrimination suit from Black librarian Desirée Goodwin, 39. Ms Goodwin claimed to have been repeatedly passed over for promotion. Apparently she had been much criticized by managers for her low-cut blouses and slinky outfits; but she maintained she was on a "never-ending quest to defy the image of a librarian" and -- in case that excuse cut no ice -- that she had flaunted her wares no more than other young female staff at Harvard. Blacks (i.e. Negroids) make up some 13% of the US population and some 60% of its convicts.

FIGHT BACK ON CAMPUS

US conservative scholar-warrior David Horowitz had the left in apoplexy over his ingenious proposal for an Academic Bill of Rights that would forbid university faculty from hiring, firing, and granting or denying promotion or tenure on the basis of political beliefs. Horowitz had not even proposed even the loosest quotas to prevent state university academics being 90% liberal, but he still found himself swiftly accused of McCarthyism.

SOUTH AMERICAN BACKWARDNESS

A new book by exotic Oxford historian Felipe Fern?ndez-Armesto maintained that it was really only bad luck that kept South America so impoverished compared to the USA (The Americas: a History of the Continents). However, in the Independent (23 ix), reviewer Frank McLynn pooh-poohed this and said there was surely a cultural problem of failing to distinguish between fantasy and reality -- presumably because of some mix of high emotionality/neuroticism, lowish IQ (around 90 -- only the Argentine gets up to 96 in IQ and the Wealth of Nations) and unreconstructed Catholicism, McLynn might have added.

SEX REALISM

After a quarter century of America and Britain sucking up to feminazies by encouraging women to join the armed services, the US Air Force announced its belief that 20% of female cadets are raped in the course of their training. Research at its elite Colorado academy obtained this result in a surveyof 660 female cadets. Another survey, reported in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, found that 30% of all female veterans claimed to have been raped or near-raped at least once during their service.

UNDETERRED by accusations of sexism,

His Holiness the Pope announced a total ban on the use of altar girls unless it was impossible to find willing altar boys. For good measure, the Pope also banned dancing and applause in Catholic churches.

PROJECT PREVENTION,

the spearhead of Barbara Harris organization Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (C.R.A.C.K.) achieved favourable publicity in the U.S.A. as it reached the target of sterilizing 1,000 crack-addicted mothers -- most of them Black or Hispicolatin.

HUTTON INQUIRY -- ITS GENETICS!

After hundreds of thousands of man-hours had been spent on a wild goose chase at Londons High Court, the psychiatrist reporting on the apparent suicide of government weapons expert Dr David Kelly revealed that Dr Kellys mother also committed suicide -- using barbiturates, in 1964, following months of serious depression after the death of her husband. Asked what could be the connection between the two deaths, Oxford Universitys Professor Keith Hawton [last seen by me trying to push another small boy up a chimney at my birthday party in New Southgate of 1950] suggested Dr Kelly might have learned from his mother that death was a means of escape from pressure; on the other hand, seeing the painful consequences of suicide for other family members would have made him less likely to choose to commit suicide himself. . .

Genetics? No, said Prof. Keith: inheritance plays a part in some mental illnesses and character traits, but Dr Kelly did not have any of these! {This amazing statement was in direct contradiction of the Times Medical Correspondent, Dr Thomas Stuttaford, that no expert would have had the slightest trouble seeing from TV that Dr Kelly had been seriously depressed when he gave evidence to Parliaments Foreign Affairs Committee a few days before he was found dead with his left wrist slashed in woods near his home.

Prof. Keith has long pursued an environmentalistic path in the course of his career, but his aberration -- assuming he was correctly reported -- before Lord Hutton's inquiry was astonishing. Perhaps he got a knock on the head like poor Frank Bruno -- who had come to believe he was a jockey? Or perhaps it was genetic?}

The Diary’s London Correspondent commented further on Prof. Keiths performance:

"Asked for further comments on Kelly's possible motive for suicide, Hawton said "I think one major factor was the immense loss of self esteem that he had from feeling people had lost trust in him and from his dismay - maybe that is an understatement -- of being exposed to the media." Note: A weak piece of armchair psychology to say the least. In fact, the inquiry has signally failed to show any plausible cause for him to commit suicide when it is born in mind that he knew that his pension was safe, his daughter was about to be married, he was getting a good deal of private support from friends and colleagues and had a crippled wife to look after.

Friday, October 03, 2003

RACIAL DESCRIPTORS

Having failed to solve the problem of distinguishing Asians [the more intelligent are now standardly called East Asians in the USA, distinguishing them from South Asians] from Srindopakeshis [the largely Caucasian inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent], the West's journalists are now working themselves into a frenzy as to how to describe the coffee-coloured peoples of America.

Apparently, Hispanic implies old White while Latin implies young and samba-dancing Portuguese after they interbred with just about everybody and lost their empire. The answer of course is Hispicolats, but at present rates of progress towards race realism this term may take a decade or two to catch on

ROMEO & JULIET 2003

A pair of British youngsters, Stephen Laing, 17, and Amanda McDonnell, 14, popped off from their parents residences near Benidorm, Spain, for a bit of paedophilia -- taking the car and credit cards belonging to the girls mother and stepfather and perhaps heading for Perth, Scotland, where Stephen once lived. Stephens mother assured paparazzi that he was perfectly able to look after the possibly pregnant Amanda, having already arranged passports showing them both as age 18; and Amanda's mother, with a refreshing lack of paedohysteria, just said the pair were "besotted" with each other. {It is to be hoped the pair do not encounter a Friar Laurence}

{After a multi-million-franc manhunt, they were eventuallyfound in at a campsite near Paris -- safe and well and "besotted with each other."}

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

(Click here and go to 'Tony Martin') Tory superhero, Norfolk farmer Tony Martin who was imprisoned for shooting at gypsy burglars (killing one), puts an affectionate arm out to London libertarian intellectual, Sean Gabb. Martin explained modestly and with good humour that Britain was no longer a democracy in which the will of British people was respected, and that the best that could be hoped for was another Glorious Revolution which -- as in the peaceful events of 1688 -- would restore to British people a respect for their own preferences.

{Instead of allowing community-building of kindred spirits, PeeCee now decrees destruction -- unless perchance the community is an all-female club or hotel in London. PeeCee will be answered as inhabitants of the Isle of Skye and north-west Wales move to protect their areas against the invading Scots and English -- themselves fleeing the ethnic problems of Glasgow and Lancashire. One day Scots and Welsh Nationalists will wake up to their duties. Already the Archdruid of Wales has spoken out in favour of local communities.}

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, questioned 324 lesbians and 324 normal women and found that lesbians were fatter. Lesbians were also less likely to be concerned about their weight or even to acknowledge their weight problems. {Further research, if ever funded, will establish that lesbos also smoke and drink too much and are a big drain on police and social services since they need much help to sort out their endless envies, jealousies and partner abuse -- see John Ray, 17 ix 03.}

CONSERVATIVES ARE HAPPIER

Survey findings showed conservatives to be less neurotic, anxious and irritable than liberal-lefties ( John Ray). Notably, in America's 1998 General Social Survey, 18.2% of extreme liberal-lefties reported that their marriages were “not too happy” while only 1.6% of extreme conservatives reported marital unhappiness.

Thursday, October 02, 2003

NO MOZART EFFECT

More cold water was poured on “sensationalized” reports of the 1990s that listening to Mozarts music increased IQ. The American Psychological Association was told that apart from temporary effects on mood, and thus on scores on a small minority of tests, a decade of research had found precisely nothing. {As I had predicted for Nature in 1993 when reviewing the original paper, and as Christopher Chabris wrote up for Commentary in 1998 -- see McDougall NewsLetter, 4 iv 2000, Environmentalunacy.}

PAEDOHYSTERIA SCORNED

Like this blog (see above), the Spectators Deputy Editor, Ron Liddle, has aimed a boot at paedohysteria (13 ix 03): “We have become, of late, terrified of and maddened by paedophilia, quite out of proportion to the threat posed by kiddie-fiddlers..”

{Forthcoming Government legislation would criminalize even kissing among under-16, so hopefully Britains teenagers will rally in opposition. David Blunkett’s Sexual Offences Bill, “designed to crack down on paedophilia, outlaws all “sexual touching” of under-16s, even when it is being done by someone of the same age” said the Sunday Telegraphs Jemima Lewis (14 ix, No more bike shed kisses). She continued: “A kiss and a squeeze behind the bike sheds could result in a five-year jail term. Even more unreasonably, parents who allow their underage sons and daughters to cavort with friends -- at supervised parties, for instance -- could be sent down for 14 years.” }

{However, the proposed Bill was properly welcomed by the Spectator for its proposal to extend anonymity to men accused of rape. 19 of every 20 rape cases fail to convince courts -- as in the case of TV presenter John Leslie -- so it is proper that men should receive protection from the immense presumption of no smoke without fire that is invariably made by feminazies.}

SES AFFECTED IQ -- ONCE UPON A TIME

Children of poor (mainly Black and Latino) mothers of the 1960s showed by 1975 an IQ heritability of only .10, according to Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia (whose result was to be published in Psychological Science in November). Turkheimer’s finding prompted a new burst of support among American commentators for complex interaction effects and for Head Start programmes. However, three points were neglected by environmentalistic enthusiasts:

(1) Traditional London School theorizing had always expressly allowed that heritability would be low when environmental conditions were extremely poor -- e.g. at levels where some children have chronic health problems or there is violence to children.

(2) Such children rarely figure in normal researches by psychologists, but they did figure in Americas medically inspired (and proportionately funded) National Collaborative Perinatal Project which tried specially hard to recruit among its 50,000 subjects pregnant mothers at the bottom of the social pile.

3) The result did not replicate in modern Britain, where Professor Robert Plomin (Maudsley Hospital) told the press he found no trace of lower heritability for his 1990s twins of very low SES. Most likely -- thanks to greater affluence and the more generous British welfare state -- there are virtually no children growing up in Britain today in the undoubted squalor of some minority homes of the USA of the 1960s. Environmentalism may once have had something to be said for it -- indeed the London School always allowed SES a c. 10% influence -- but it is of less relevance today when all homes have refrigerators, radios, Tvs and telephones of some kind.

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH STAYS IN DOGHOUSE

Ratings of UK universities by the Sunday Times (14 ix 03) showed the censorious, race-unrealistic and paedohysterical LUniversity of Edinburgh still outside the magic top ten -- among which it always found itself comfortably while employing me. Its overall position was 11th but this reflected chiefly the fact that it attracted the 6th-best-qualified students; by contrast, its rating for research quality put it at only 14th. The Psychology Department in particular failed to achieve the rating of excellent which was achieved by its rivals in Glasgow, Saint Andrews and Stirling; and only two Edinburgh departments (Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Geography) achieved the treasured “6*”, i.e. really excellent status -- as compared with more than a score of departments at Oxford and Cambridge and two score at the giant University of London. No wonder Edinburgh’s President of its Student Association, asked to pick the single best feature of the University replied simply, “Our city.”

{Yet one has to admire Edinburgh’s genius for misleading PR. It boasted to the Sunday Times of its Medical School and in return had a big picture printed of its students seated in a nice old library with plenty of skeletons. In fact, however, the Scotsman had announced a few days previously that it was Dundee University that was “at the forefront of medical research, being named as the most quoted university in Europe” (9 ix, Dundee earning more scientific respect than Oxford or Cambridge, Alastair Dalton, Science Correspondent).}

LABOUR GURU TO GET TOUGH ON IMMIGRATION

Former Labour Transport Secretary Stephen Byers was said to be planning to return to politics as an outrider for Tony Blair (Sunday Times, 14 ix 03). Apparently: “Among other ideas being floated by a man once judged more Blairite than Blair is a draconian crackdown on illegal immigrants that would result in tens of thousands of them being hunted down and deported. ;.In a recent speech on asylum, he called for squads of police and immigration officials to raid hotels, farms, restaurants and other employers to flush out and deport illegal immigrants. Byers also called for people who employ illegals immigrants to be made legally liable for doing so.” Having been ousted from his last Cabinet job when he stood by one of his special advisers revealed as suggesting that the day of 9/11 might be “a very good day to get out anything we want to bury”, Byers was not aiming for a place in government; but he was once one of Blairs closest Cabinet colleagues, so his ambition for guru status could be taken seriously.

MUSLIM TERROR -- THE EFFETE RESPONSE

Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore was allowed a little ramble in the Spectator (13 ix 03) to the effect there might be a bit of a problem for the West, on balance, with the Muslims. But he concluded jauntily that Rev. Blair might use Islam as his next plank of support, just as Emperor Constantine turned Christianity and its martyrs to good effect. {Evidently, Charles Moore does not appreciate that Blair already has all the religion and votes he needs in PeeCee-Multiculturalism which reaches ever dafter heights as Britain’s immigration service turns out to admit known Muslim terrorists lest they be be persecuted in Algeria (Sunday Times, 14 ix 03).}

Background

"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" -- Genesis 12:3

My (Gentile) opinion of antisemitism: The Jews are the best we've got so killing them is killing us.

I have always liked the story of Gideon (See Judges chapters 6 to 8) and it is surely no surprise that in the present age Israel is the Gideon of nations: Few in numbers but big in power and impact.

"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." -- Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left.

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among people who should know better, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

“Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics.” -- C.J. Keyser

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state – capitalism frees them.

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

Following the Sotomayor precedent, I would hope that a wise older white man such as myself with the richness of that experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than someone who hasn’t lived that life.

IQ and ideology: Most academics are Left-leaning. Why? Because very bright people who have balls go into business, while very bright people with no balls go into academe. I did both with considerable success, which makes me a considerable rarity. Although I am a born academic, I have always been good with money too. My share portfolio even survived the GFC in good shape. The academics hate it that bright people with balls make more money than them.

If I were not an atheist, I would believe that God had a sense of humour. He gave his chosen people (the Jews) enormous advantages -- high intelligence and high drive -- but to keep it fair he deprived them of something hugely important too: Political sense. So Jews to this day tend very strongly to be Leftist -- even though the chief source of antisemitism for roughly the last 200 years has been the political Left!

And the other side of the coin is that Jews tend to despise conservatives and Christians. Yet American fundamentalist Christians are the bedrock of the vital American support for Israel, the ultimate bolthole for all Jews. So Jewish political irrationality seems to be a rather good example of the saying that "The LORD giveth and the LORD taketh away". There are many other examples of such perversity (or "balance"). The sometimes severe side-effects of most pharmaceutical drugs is an obvious one but there is another ethnic example too, a rather amusing one. Chinese people are in general smart and patient people but their rate of traffic accidents in China is about 10 times higher than what prevails in Western societies. They are brilliant mathematicians and fearless business entrepreneurs but at the same time bad drivers!

The above is good testimony to the accuracy of the basic conservative insight that almost anything in human life is too complex to be reduced to any simple rule and too complex to be reduced to any rule at all without allowance for important exceptions to the rule concerned

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

Conservatives, on the other hand could be antisemitic on entirely rational grounds: Namely, the overwhelming Leftism of the Jewish population as a whole. Because they judge the individual, however, only a tiny minority of conservative-oriented people make such general judgments. The longer Jews continue on their "stiff-necked" course, however, the more that is in danger of changing. The children of Israel have been a stiff necked people since the days of Moses, however, so they will no doubt continue to vote with their emotions rather than their reason.

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931–2005: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

The Supreme Court of the United States is now and always has been a judicial abomination. Its guiding principles have always been political rather than judicial. It is not as political as Stalin's courts but its respect for the constitution is little better. Some recent abuses: The "equal treatment" provision of the 14th amendment was specifically written to outlaw racial discrimination yet the court has allowed various forms of "affirmative action" for decades -- when all such policies should have been completely stuck down immediately. The 2nd. amendment says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed yet gun control laws infringe it in every State in the union. The 1st amendment provides that speech shall be freely exercised yet the court has upheld various restrictions on the financing and display of political advertising. The court has found a right to abortion in the constitution when the word abortion is not even mentioned there. The court invents rights that do not exist and denies rights that do.

The U.S. Constitution is neither "living" nor dead. It is fixed until it is amended. But amending it is the privilege of the people, not of politicians or judges

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

The basic aim of all bureaucrats is to maximize their funding and minimize their workload

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

I imagine that most Americans might find this rather mad -- but I am an unabashed Monarchist. I believe that a constitutional Monarchy is the best form of government presently available. And since I live in a constitutional monarchy (Australia) I am very happily situated. Can a libertarian be a Monarchist? I think so -- and prominent British libertarian Sean Gabb seems to think so too! Long live the Queen! (And note that Australia ranks well above the USA on the Index of Economic freedom. Heh!)

Throughout Europe there is an association between monarchism and conservatism. It is a little sad that American conservatives do not have access to that satisfaction. So even though Australia is much more distant from Europe (geographically) than the USA is, Australia is in some ways more of an outpost of Europe than America is! Mind you: Australia is not very atypical of its region. Australia lies just South of Asia -- and both Japan and Thailand have greatly respected monarchies. And the demise of the Cambodian monarchy was disastrous for Cambodia

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter: The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

Jesse Jackson: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." There ARE important racial differences.

Some Jimmy Carter wisdom: "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "there's going to be a downward turning."

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

The "steamroller" above who got steamrollered by his own hubris. Spitzer is a warning of how self-destructive a vast ego can be -- and also of how destructive of others it can be.

Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

I completed the work for my Ph.D. at the end of 1970 but the degree was not awarded until 1974 -- due to some academic nastiness from Seymour Martin Lipset and Fred Emery. A conservative or libertarian who makes it through the academic maze has to be at least twice as good as the average conformist Leftist. Fortunately, I am a born academic.

As well as being an academic, I am an army man and I am pleased and proud to say that I have worn my country's uniform. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

I imagine that few of my readers will understand it, but I am an unabashed monarchist. And, as someone who was born and bred in a monarchy and who still lives there (i.e. Australia), that gives me no conflicts at all. In theory, one's respect for the monarchy does not depend on who wears the crown but the impeccable behaviour of the present Queen does of course help perpetuate that respect. Aside from my huge respect for the Queen, however, my favourite member of the Royal family is the redheaded Prince Harry. The Royal family is of course a military family and Prince Harry is a great example of that. As one of the world's most privileged people, he could well be an idle layabout but instead he loves his life in the army. When his girlfriend Chelsy ditched him because he was so often away, Prince Harry said: "I love Chelsy but the army comes first". A perfect military man! I doubt that many women would understand or approve of his attitude but perhaps my own small army background powers my approval of that attitude.

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"

UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.

Despite my great sympathy and respect for Christianity, I am the most complete atheist you could find. I don't even believe that the word "God" is meaningful. I am not at all original in that view, of course. Such views are particularly associated with the noted German philosopher Rudolf Carnap. Unlike Carnap, however, none of my wives have committed suicide

I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak. Some might conclude that I must therefore be a very confused sort of atheist but I can assure everyone that I do not feel the least bit confused. The New Testament is a lighthouse that has illumined the thinking of all sorts of men and women and I am deeply grateful that it has shone on me.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. Conservatism is in touch with reality. Leftism is not.

I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address

Most teenagers have sporting and movie posters on their bedroom walls. At age 14 I had a map of Taiwan on my wall.

"Remind me never to get this guy mad at me" -- Instapundit

I have used many sites to post my writings over the years and many have gone bad on me for various reasons. So if you click on a link here to my other writings you may get a "page not found" response if the link was put up some time before the present. All is not lost, however. All my writings have been reposted elsewhere. If you do strike a failed link, just take the filename (the last part of the link) and add it to the address of any of my current home pages and -- Voila! -- you should find the article concerned.

It seems to be a common view that you cannot talk informatively about a country unless you have been there. I completely reject that view but it is nonetheless likely that some Leftist dimbulb will at some stage aver that any comments I make about politics and events in the USA should not be heeded because I am an Australian who has lived almost all his life in Australia. I am reluctant to pander to such ignorance in the era of the "global village" but for the sake of the argument I might mention that I have visited the USA 3 times -- spending enough time in Los Angeles and NYC to get to know a fair bit about those places at least. I did however get outside those places enough to realize that they are NOT America.

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in my MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

COMMENTS: I have gradually added comments facilities to all my blogs. The comments I get are interesting. They are mostly from Leftists and most consist either of abuse or mere assertions. Reasoned arguments backed up by references to supporting evidence are almost unheard of from Leftists. Needless to say, I just delete such useless comments.

My academic background

My full name is Dr. John Joseph RAY. I am a former university teacher aged 65 at the time of writing in 2009. I was born of Australian pioneer stock in 1943 at Innisfail in the State of Queensland in Australia. I trace my ancestry wholly to the British Isles. After an early education at Innisfail State Rural School and Cairns State High School, I taught myself for matriculation. I took my B.A. in Psychology from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. I then moved to Sydney (in New South Wales, Australia) and took my M.A. in psychology from the University of Sydney in 1969 and my Ph.D. from the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in 1974. I first tutored in psychology at Macquarie University and then taught sociology at the University of NSW. My doctorate is in psychology but I taught mainly sociology in my 14 years as a university teacher. In High Schools I taught economics. I have taught in both traditional and "progressive" (low discipline) High Schools. Fuller biographical notes here

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here